The Sims 4 launched last night in the US and eager Sims fans fired it up overnight. Critics have yet to get their hands on the game here in Europe and US critics will have just started playing like everyone else, so for the moment, these initial impressions are about the best we can go by.

We usually don’t check gamer scores on Metacritic because they tend to be all over the place, but as EA has refused to comment on when exactly press in Europe can start reviewing the game, we had to take a peek to see what initial impressions are like. Remember: these “reviews” will only be based on a few hours playing so you shouldn’t take them as full-fledged “final scores”, but we can at least get an idea of what people like and don’t like as far as features are concerned. Right now, it’s sitting on a 6.0 in Metacritic with reviews pretty split between 10/10 and 0/10, so…

I’ve played it a couple of hours yesterday. My first impressions are actually really good. – The_X_Filess [10/10]

What the hell? I bought this being really excited about getting the next generation of Sims games, but it really just seems like a fancied up version of the Sims 2 with LESS features – Doctective. [0/10]

Sims 4 is not a really bad game, but not a good one either – Adrian Chan [5/10]

I played with the Create A Sim demo and felt I had a good understanding of it, but once I started in the actual game the create a sim setup has no natural path. – JarrahG [1/10]

I can not believe how did they possibly manage to destroy an amazing franchise with this God awful game. Nothing, absolute NOTHING is good about this game. – BloodChronism [o/10]

I was exciting about this game. I like the way the Sims look and I love the multitasking, but the game itself is very lacking and boring. trixiebayn [0/10]

Played for 5 hours so far and to be honest, I don’t see much improvement over Sims 3. Yes loading times are shorter, yes there are moods now, and sim creation is slider-less, graphics little bit better, but overall it is the same game. It should be called Sims 3.5. – Hedon [3/10]

Been playing for the better half of the night and this game is alright. Not many improvements to be honest, and the sliders are cool though. The left out plenty of stuff from previous entries which i’m sure will be paid dlc down the road. Do not buy this game now, wait for a flash sale in the coming weeks. [2] – corey3612

This is just a sample of what’s popped up so far, but – again – do remember that these impressions will be after only a few hours play, so it’s a bit risky to take them as final opinions based on extensive play. It’s interesting to see a bit of conflict in there, too; ignoring the 10/10 review for a moment, there are those claiming it’s a lot like The Sims 3 and those claiming it’s The Sims 2 with less features.

Meanwhile, over in the official forums, the community appears to be split on the game’s quality. This thread is probably the most constructive and sensible one to read.

With press not being able to play the game prior to launch we do have our suspicions that the game could be lacking but we’ll reserve judgment for now. Tim is our Sims expert – he’s played them all, so it will be interesting to find out what he thinks later this week when it launches here in the UK. For now, though, keep your money firmly in your wallet.